Dplyr: Rename multiple variables with regex by name

September 12, 2022

I need to rename multiple variables using a replacement dataframe. This replacement dataframe also includes regex. I would like to use a similar solution proposed here, .e.g

df %>% rename_with(~ newnames, all_of(oldnames))

MWE:

df <- mtcars[, 1:5]

# works without regex 
replace_df_1 <- tibble::tibble(
  old = df %>% colnames(),
  new = df %>% colnames() %>% toupper()
) 

df %>% rename_with(~ replace_df_1$new, all_of(replace_df_1$old))


# with regex

replace_df_2 <- tibble::tibble(
  old = c("^m", "cyl101|cyl", "disp", "hp", "drat"),
  new = df %>% colnames() %>% toupper()
)

  old        new  
  <chr>      <chr>
1 ^m         MPG  
2 cyl101|cyl CYL  
3 disp       DISP 
4 hp         HP   
5 drat       DRAT 

# does not work
df %>% rename_with(~ replace_df_2$new, all_of(replace_df_2$old))
df %>% rename_with(~ matches(replace_df_2$new), all_of(replace_df_2$old))

Thank you for any hints!

>Solution :

matches should be on the regex-y column:

df %>% 
  rename_with(~ replace_df_2$new, matches(replace_df_2$old))

                     MPG CYL  DISP  HP DRAT
Mazda RX4           21.0   6 160.0 110 3.90
Mazda RX4 Wag       21.0   6 160.0 110 3.90
Datsun 710          22.8   4 108.0  93 3.85
Hornet 4 Drive      21.4   6 258.0 110 3.08
Hornet Sportabout   18.7   8 360.0 175 3.15
Valiant             18.1   6 225.0 105 2.76
#...